Pip's small car is already full, of dog. There is no getting round the size of her dog Bruce. Literally. And he and Bartelt sit on the back seat of the car grinning at us and at each other.
We met Pip through the show. Not only is the show self-selecting, in that people come who are interested in the subject matter and, mostly, fancy a bit of death-chat, but we have met many great people through it. Pip is a boon though. Obviously we are able to stay with her for three nights while we do the show in Oxford, which is rather marvellous, but there is more to Pip than the comfy futon, peaceful house and phenomenal cooking. There's the fizzy wine, cute garden, great music collection, the books, the promised guided tour round the Bodleian... no, no, no, I mean there's her brother's death.
Pip looked, well, very upset when she came out of the show in Edinburgh. By this stage Bartelt and I had become, not inured to it, but somehow to expect it. Many's the time I went running after someone or other and encouraged them to join us for a drink. Pip was easy to persuade. As we talked, with another friend, Carrie, whose father died recently, it became clear what a loss her brother had been, how she missed him... the loneliness, I guess, of grief. We all find ourselves agreeing vigorously and it is clear that this is not the reaction Pip is used to. She describes a long journey to here, a slightly better place than the one she found herself in the days after he died.
And she is the ideal host. We get to walk Bruce, the enormous dog, but this is not just any walk: this is a guided, history walk through an Oxford park. Pip knows.. EVERYTHING. I'm not surprised at all, she is clearly a very bright woman with a good memory, but her knowledge is wonderful. Ironically, despite mine and Bartelt's assurances, she keeps apologising for the commentary. We run out of ways to tell her that we love it, that we'll probably only retain 10% of it, even after only half an hour or so, but that we want to hear as much history as she can give us! We both have a very quick half life for retaining historical facts. I'm not a great reader, I find it very hard, and here is the equivalent of a concise history of everything about Oxford, literature and nearly everything else, just pouring out of her into my head. We stay up a bit too late and drink a bit too much, but we don't mind because we're in Oxford. With Pip. And Bruce, the enormous dog.
It has been a long time, maybe always – I don't remember – that my memory has had a very swift half life. It never ceases to amaze me what other people retain, and it's not because I'm not interested, which people often infer. It's because... I have a diabolical memory, which is particularly unjust as I've never done any class A drugs.
Before we actually get to bed, and admittedly after a few drinks, Pip has to get the complete Oxford English Dictionary down and look up the total background of some words. We are WILD. I don't recall which word is was, of course, but Bartelt and she have a fantastic time with their noses buried in the enormous book while I look on. It's our kind of fun.
But however many dictionaries we try to read, bedtime arrives and for the first time in our collaboration-cum-friendship, Bartelt and I are sharing a futon and only ONE duvet. We are both single and it's no one's business what we get up to: what happens on the tour of the show about my sister's murder stays on the tour about my sister's murder as well as being documented in the blog, obviously. I have to confess I am worried, though: if I in anyway stop him sleeping he will become impossible and if, more likely, he simply has a bad night's sleep, as often happens, he's going to blame me and he will become impossible. I lie in a very small, still line down the very far side of the futon and think of very still things.
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